Forest Law Enforcement and Governance

Timber Legality Assurance Systems

The purpose of the timber legality assurance systems is to provide viable modalities for to verify and distinguish the legal timber and timber products from the illegal timber. The partner countries to conclude Voluntary Partnership Agreements must implement systems assuring that only legal timber is licensed for export. LAS shall also include checks of the forestry operations within the forest and the control of the timber custody chain from forest to export. Such a legality assurance system shall include at least five components:

1. Definition of legally produced wood and wood products - standard clearly setting which laws of the partner countries and which criteria should be met
2. Custody chain control (there exist systems for tracing timber from forest to export as finite product).
3. Verification requirements to check the legality conditions as well as the control of the timber sourcing in the custody chain.
4. . Licence details on the body issuing the licence and on the issue procedure

EU proposal for the Regulation on economic operators trading timber and timber products on the EU market

The regulation introduces the obligation for all economical agents in wood industry to place on the market only timber products obtained from wood of known sources, legally logged and harvested.

Companies in this field placing for the first time timber products on EU market are deemed the most vulnerable to the risk of placing illegal timber on EU market.

Such companies must give basic information on the species name, quantity (volume), harvest country and, where practicable, the source forest.

They also have to identify the operator supplying wood and wood products as well as the operator receiving the wood and wood products.

The member states must guarantee that, within 2 years from the date the regulation comes into force, the entire amount of wood and timber products introduced and made available on the market is labelled in compliance to these requirements.

Contact

Marius Turtica
tel: +40 740 300 616
mail:acf@certificareforestiera.ro

Certificate FSC Romania